User:Medalstats

I am trying to improve the all time Olympic medal count tallies at Wikipedia. Although the International Olympic Committee IOC rejects medal tallies and rankings of nations (e. g., Sports Illustrated), the mass media publish them anyway. Different sources follow wildly varying habits though. CNN and NBC and others rank nations by the total number of medals, BBC and others by gold. Some simply delete nations such as the USSR that do not exist any more; e. g., see here. Many omit the number of participations per country (the USSR participated rarely, but usually won the medal count whenever they did). Some demand tallies with an entry for the EU, just like in GDP tables, e. g.: List of countries by GDP %28nominal%29; compare the Washington Times. The medals of the various fragments of Germany are often but not always added together, e. g., here. The medals of the USSR and its successor state CIS are frequently but not always added together. Often the medals of USSR and CIS are added to those of Russia, which is smaller but viewed as their political heir, e. g., here. Many mention the medals per capita, e. g., the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Sport1.at.

The following table tries to address such issues by providing all the relevant information at a glance: the number of medals and participations, the average number of medals and golds per Games, the number of medal count victories and gold count victories (also per Games), and the average number of people per medal and per gold (rounded). The latest available population data is used for the per capita entries - maybe one should instead average out the medal per capita data for all years when the nation participated. In separate rows marked by asterisks* (below the blue line), the data is also provided for countries / organizations that had several National Olympic Committees in the past, such as Germany (East, West), USSR/CIS, and the EU, to the extent that these are widely recognized and a general interest in such matters is reflected by other articles inside and outside of Wikipedia. Light background colors gold, silver, bronze indicate rankings in various categories. For example, East Germany leads in the category "average number of medals per capita", the USA in the categories "absolute number of medals" and "gold count wins" (ignoring the EU as a whole), the USSR in the categories "medals per Games" and "medal count wins per Games", Norway in the category "medal count wins per capita", etc. The table is limited to medal count winners; nevertheless it might serve as a role model for extended tables encompassing all nations. Medalstats 14:18, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

This template will categorize articles that include it into Category:WikiProject Sports Olympics Participants.